


wanting, wanting, wanting

by bellafarallones



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Asexual Carlton Drake, Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 18:53:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16270271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellafarallones/pseuds/bellafarallones
Summary: Carlton Drake has a long history of wanting things. Money, power, a friend. Peace and quiet. Riot wants things too. Neither of them can get everything.





	wanting, wanting, wanting

Carlton Drake wanted peace and quiet. As a freshman at Harvard, he also wanted an A and a summer internship at Google.

But now it was November, and he had just sunk into the world of organic chemistry when there was a knock at the dorm room door. His roommate, Han-Jae, had headphones in and didn’t look like he was about to get up. So Carlton hauled himself to the door, arranged his face into a relaxed smile, and opened it.

“Hey,” said the blonde girl leaning against the doorframe. Carlton blinked. Julie from Intro to Public Relations.

“Hello,” he said. “How may I help you?”

“Oh, you know. I was just bored.” She was wearing black leggings and a white tank top, a pink sweatshirt open and hanging off her shoulders. “Thought you might want some company.“

“As much fun as that sounds, I’m working.”

“You don’t even have time for a little study break?”

“Nope. Sorry. Have a lovely evening,” he said, and closed the door in her face.

Han-jae spun around in his desk chair. Oh, so his music hadn’t been so loud after all. He was still sweaty from lacrosse practice and wearing a semi-muddy jersey, too. “Dude, what the hell? Didn’t you see she wanted to smash?”

“And I want to finish this reading at a reasonable hour.”

He didn’t understand why not feeling the need to date or have sex was such a big deal. He wanted other things, _so many_ other things, what was one less? And he did end up finishing his homework and going out that evening.

Carlton squeezed himself into one of the tiny chairs in a classroom with multiplication table posters on the wall. If it had been up to him he would have put real moulding up instead of a strip of paper with smiling pencils printed on it, but it wasn’t. Never would be. He couldn’t see himself as a full-time teacher. He could do so much more than that.

But for now? Teaching the third-graders long division? They didn’t ask him why he wasn’t out hooking up. They looked at him like he was a god, and it encouraged him to be better. To show as much respect to a square root symbol as a triple integral. To smile back.

That was another thing Carlton wanted. He wanted those children who were gifted, who asked questions, who were like him, to feel special. The talented tenth, as W.E.B. DuBois put it.

\--

The scientist’s break room at the Life Foundation was blessedly quiet. Most people were scrolling through their phones with one hand and spooning quinoa-and-kale salad into their mouths with the other.

Dr. Drake breathed in the sugar emanating from the white box of donuts on the counter. Pink frosting, rainbow sprinkles, and a smiling face on each in white. He had done that himself. Employee morale mattered. He took the one that had a smudged smile - eliminate the imperfect - and sat down across from Dr. Skirth.

“Dora,” he said quietly.

She looked up from her phone. “Hm?”

“You did your graduate thesis on the uses of ethics in experimental design, right?”

“Yes. I’m surprised you read it, sir.”

“Aw, it’s nothing. I had to do my due diligence when I hired you. Besides, I always hope someone is reading mine. Any of mine.” One PhD in pharmacological chemistry, another in astrophysics. He had big dreams about bringing aliens back to Earth, but building a rocket was the first step.

Dora nodded. Whatever she was eating, it smelled delicious.

“Anyway, I’ve been thinking about ethics lately.”

Her eyes widened. “Have you?”

Yes, he had. She’d brought it up. Once with a colleague when she hadn’t known he was loitering around the corner and once to his face. “I’ve asked to audit some ethics classes at UC San Francisco. And I was wondering if there was any particular subject you thought deserved more consideration.”

“Bioethics.” She laughed shortly. “ _Informed_ consent.”

“Do you think we go too far?”

“Don’t think I don’t admire your work, Dr. Drake. I do. Not every entrepreneur would want to cure cancer. Curing isn’t great for profit.”

“Isn’t it, though? The people you cure will remember your name for the rest of their lives. Life is valuable.”

She took a swig of coffee out of her thermos. The smell floated through the room like symbiote tendrils. “That’s not how you treat our test subjects now.”

Carlton shrugged. “I envy them, sometimes.”

“What?”

“They don’t have to worry about the future like I do. They die knowing that they helped, that they did their best. I have so much more potential than they did, so I’m under more pressure. How will I ever know if I’ve done the best I could? Surely someone like you feels the same way.”

She only shook her head and closed the lid on her Tupperware. “I’d better get back to work, Carlton.”

“Nice talking to you. Have a good rest of your day.” He smiled and waved at her as she left. He liked her. She was smart, like him, even if she didn’t see things in the same way. He wanted her to like him back.

Carlton leaned back in his chair and pulled at the collar of his shirt. He bought silk, he bought French terry, but it all felt rough as sandpaper against his skin. For once in his life, he wanted a jacket that wasn’t an uncomfortable reminder of how weak and fragile he was. After he’d gotten humanity off Earth, he’d have to work on designing some better materials.

\--

Pale blue light. Clean white hallways. Carlton wanted peace and quiet, and here in the lab he found it. He also found this little girl with probably-sticky hands but a look in her eye like she might be intelligent.

“Are you lost?” said Carlton. Dr. Skirth had suggested that his shoot-on-sight policy for lab intruders might be a little draconian, especially given that the symbiotes themselves were so lethal, so he was trying to be friendly.

Then the tendrils reached out. He stumbled back, he didn’t envy the test subjects _that_ much. He wanted to get away. He wanted to be safe. But the symbiote was faster.

Then Riot was inside him. Riot’s wants mixed with Carlton’s wants and congealed into a being of pure ambition, pure desire. Wanting power. Wanting to purge humanity, wanting to save it. Wanting _sex,_ which was honestly a new one for him. Riot wanted to have sex.

**Oh.**

“My name is Carlton Drake,” said Carlton Drake.

 **I am Riot,** said Riot.

“Right. Nice to meet you.” Carlton spun desperately. Could he call for security? Would the symbiote leave him alive and inhabit someone less valuable?

 **Don’t bother trying,** said Riot. **I won’t hurt you. You can help me.**

“What do you want?”

**I need to bring more of my kind to Earth. We cannot survive in place.**

“God, I know how that feels. I suppose they don’t want to leave? Because it’s ‘home?’ Because they’ve convinced themselves they can save an entire planet when they can’t even save themselves?”

Riot said nothing for a moment. **I can help you too.**

“With my experiments?”

**With everything. I see what you want, Carlton Drake. You want to feel powerful. You want to be comfortable. Isn’t this comfortable?**

Black goo enveloped him, soaking him to the skin. The rashes on his neck and wrists where his clothes rubbed at him disappeared. He took a few steps across the lab, and felt so much stronger, so much taller. Like he could do anything. Like he could reach whatever he wanted with sticky black tendrils and tear into it with long, sharp teeth.

Carlton licked his lips. “Can you tell me why all our test hosts have been dying?”

**We need live meat.**

“So the nutritional liquid wasn’t good enough.”

**No. But there are many things on this planet that we could eat.**

Suddenly Carlton realized that he wanted, more than anything else at the moment, to eat.

\--

As the rocket went up in flames, Carlton wanted Dr. Skirth back. Why had he killed her, again? She generally gave good advice. Just because she’d failed didn’t mean she wasn’t useful. He knew how useful failure was. The trucks that carried the autopsied corpses to the city morgue knew how useful failure was. He had convinced her to give him Eddie’s name, he could have convinced her he was doing the right thing.

But she was gone, and Riot kept screaming. Neither of them wanted to die. And as fire roared in Carlton’s ears, flesh melting off his bones, he also wanted some damn peace and quiet.


End file.
